[R-G] Did George Washington Smoke Pot?

[Anthony Fenton]

February 16, 2009
Hail to the Spleef!
Did George Washington Smoke Pot?
http://counterpunch.org/wasserman02162009.html
By HARVEY WASSERMAN

Did George Washington raise hemp? Did he smoke it? Was he gay?

The easy answers are definitely, probably, and maybe.

The questions arise with pre-publication of the shocking satire  
PASSIONS OF THE PATRIOTS by “Thomas Paine,” which opens with Le  
General in the hemp-filled embrace of his beloved Marquis de Lafayette.

As Washington’s February 22 birthday approaches, his personal habits  
say much about today’s America.

Like virtually every Revolutionary farmer, the Father of Our Country  
grew prodigious quantities of hemp. It was (is) a profitable cash  
crop, easy to grow, with scant demands for cultivation, watering or  
fertilizing. As a hardy perennial, it needs no year-after-year  
replanting, nor pesticides or herbicides.

Early American farmers used cannabis for cloth, rope, sails, paper and  
much more. At various times its cultivation has been mandatory. Kansas  
was virtually carpeted with it during World War Two. In today’s  
conversion to a Solartopian economy, the cellulose of its stems and  
leaves, and the oil from its seeds, could be essential for green  
ethanol and bio-diesel fuels.

Washington and his fellow planter/presidents Tom Jefferson and James  
Madison would be astonished to hear that hemp is illegal. These early  
chief executives would certainly have told President Obama that a re- 
legalized cannabis crop would mean billions of dollars in desperately  
needed farm revenue throughout the United States.

As for smoking, I know of no significant communication among the  
Founders extolling their “great weed.”

But in one of his meticulous agricultural journals, dated 1765,  
Washington regrets being late to separate his male hemp plants from  
his females. For a master farmer like George, there would be little  
reason to do this except to make the females ripe for smoking.

The medicinal uses of cannabis were known to the ancient Chinese.  
Thousands of years later, it’s inconceivable American growers would  
not indulge in its recreational powers.

As for Washington’s sexual preferences, his marriage to Martha was  
sometimes suspect. Historians joke that he did not marry her for her  
money, but rather for her stocks, bonds, land and slaves. In a letter  
to a friend, he complained that there was “not much fire between the  
sheets.”

Ben Franklin, the ultimate liberal, loved so many women he joked that  
the great miracle in his life was that he contracted no related  
diseases. Tom Jefferson impregnated his slave mistress Sally Hemings  
as many as seven times. From Andrew Jackson to Bill Clinton, American  
presidents have been infamous for their sexual dalliances.

George Washington did not lack for female companionship. But his  
deepest affections may have been for his fellow warriors. His beloved  
brothers in arms included Lafayette and Alexander Hamilton. Both were  
married with children, but both excited his strongest comradely  
devotion.

That the general had no biological children of his own may have been  
due to a fever early in his life that could have rendered him sterile.

Or maybe not. It’s hard to imagine a gay George Washington in the  
1790s. But in the 1990s, things might have been different.

The modern anti-choice assault, including California’s Proposition 8,  
flies in the face of all Washington and the Founders dreamed of for  
this nation.

Today’s Puritannical “sunshine patriots” seem hell-bent on running our  
personal lives. But America has NEVER been about that.

Let them contemplate an image of our first president, fresh from the  
battlefields and the hemp fields, desperate to marry his fellow winter  
soldier.

Harvey Wasserman’s HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is at www.harveywasserman.com 
, as is PASSIONS OF THE PATRIOTS by “Thomas Paine”. This article was  
originally published by http://freepress.org.